Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Journal Three- Alexandra Abrams

PART ONE: My overall reading is going really well. I enjoy the books that we are reading. My strengths in my reading is remembering what I have read after writing and highlighting notes in the book that help create a better image into my mind. My weakness in these books are trying to make a transition from a brutal disturbing book (A Long Way Gone) to a very humorous book (A House on Mango Street). I love both books very much though. My active reading has been consistent. When I have time to just myself I am able to read more and more. I have trained myself to always finish the chapter to not make any confusion with what I have read. I feel as if I am jotting down some key points that I think are important to the chapter. If I don't have time to read, I always make time. I could be watching a movie and instead I would hold off on the movie to at least get a chapter or two done and analyze what I have read.

PART TWO: I have decided to name chapter 9 in A Long Way Gone, "Seven Boys".
A nutshell that I have written about this chapter is that the seven boys had arrived at at the Atlantic Ocean. After running away for their lives from the villagers, the seven boys have had some brutal damages to their body starting from the bleeding of the heels to the disturbing memories in their mind. The seven boys mean no harm but rumors have been spread around to villages of the "danger" the seven boys are appeared to be. A man welcome them into their hut although the boys weren't properly welcomed by the start. When all good is to good to be true the boys nightmare of being kicked out again becomes true.
A vocabulary word that I think is important is mercenaries. This word means:a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army. I think this is very important because the Chief of the village described the boys as these and this made me think of what a lot of the people in the village had thought of with just rumors that were told to each village. A challenge in this chapter that really caught my attention was that the seven boys had to find a way to survive knowing that every village they came across to looked at them as enemies. This affects the relationships between each other in a negative way for both the seven boys and the villagers because there is fear upon each other that is losing the trust of between who is really the enemy and who isn't. This quote from the book really made me see the tension between the two. "The flesh on my face twitched as we waited for the chief to grant us life or death." From this moment I realized that trust has been broken even with kids in their early teens are considered to be enemies in this book.